January 22, 2015

Yea...But It's Still Getting Warmer AND We're To Blame

The West Virginia Board of Education has redefined the word “chicken.” It voted 6-2 last week to reverse a decision that would have included views contrary to the current climate change theology in the Mountain State's science curriculum. The board president is the wife of U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin. What a travesty that West Virginia students are being denied this necessary exercise in critical thinking. This is political indoctrination at its worst.

Last month, the state Board of Education voted to adopt the Next Generation Science Standards, an academic framework that calls on teachers to teach man-made climate change in public-school classrooms.

So far so good. So what happened next?

At the request of a board member who does not consider global warming settled science, however, the board altered the standards prior to their final adoption to cast doubt on the existence of global warming and the role of human activity in changing the planet's climate.

They changed this:

Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.

To this:

Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise and fall in global temperatures over the past century.

And if you're talking climate change, that's simply not true.

And so one person on the board (one who doesn't believe in the science in the first place) added text to the standards that contradicts the actual science (held by 97% of the actual experts in the field) in order for those teaching standards to more closely conform to his own political views and not the science. And what happens? The braintrust cries foul that it's "political indoctrination at its worst" when that assault on science is corrected.

Interesting definitions of "political indoctrination" and "science" they got over there at the Tribune-Review.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/01/19/hot-air-scientists-say-noaanasa-fudging-the-facts-on-2014-record-warmth/Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA said 2014 was the warmest year on record at about 0.69 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average temperature. Last year beat out the next warmest years of 2010 and 2005 by only about 0.04 degrees Celsius. But the four-hundredths of a degree difference between 2014 and previous records is within the margin of measurement error, meaning scientists can’t be 100 percent sure last year was actually the hottest ever recorded.

That's hardly a backpedal, its an acknowledgement that results are within the margin of error. "best" case scenario? 2014 was just as hot as 2005 and 2010. Worst case, it was hotter. Your evidence of "backpedaling" is very, very weak sauce, especially since your "source" is the Daily Caller.